Chapter VI: Asia on a Pedestal

Asie from Shéhérazadeby Tristan Klingsor (1874-1966)

While Africa purportedly boasted wild beasts and hunters, monkeys in trees, and naked humans of both sexes, the appeal of Asia was more muted. Debussy loved the quietness of eastern religion, and touted Asia in many of his piano works. Here his countryman, Ravel, chooses a text which is focussed on the poetry, the princesses, and the palaces of Asia, though not without a small paean to its violence as well. This poem is the first of the 3 songs of Ravel's cycle, Shéhérazade. Again the Orient shines in its exoticism.

Asia, Asia, Asia!Ancient, wonderful land of nursery storiesWhere fantasy sleeps like an empress,In her forest filled with mystery.Asia, I want to sail away on the schoonerThat rides in the harbour this eveningMysterious and solitary,And finally unfurls purple sailsLike a vast nocturnal bird in the golden sky.I want to sail away to the islands of flowers,Listening to the perverse sea singingTo an old bewitching rhythm.I want to see Damascus and the cities of PersiaWith their slender minarets in the air.I want to see beautiful turbans of silkOver dark faces with gleaming teeth;I want to see dark amorous eyesAnd pupils sparkling with joyIn skins as yellow as oranges;I want to see velvet cloaksAnd robes with long fringes.I want to see long pipes in lipsFringed round by white beards;I want to see crafty merchants with suspicious glances,And cadis and viziersWho with one movement of their bending fingerDecree life or death, at whim.I want to see Persia, and India, and then China,Pot-bellied mandarins under their umbrellas,Princesses with delicate hands,And scholars arguingAbout poetry and beauty;I want to linger in the enchanted palaceAnd like a foreign travellerContemplate at leisure landscapes paintedOn cloth in pinewood frames,With a figure in the middle of an orchard;I want to see murderers smilingWhile the executioner cuts off an innocent headWith his great curved Oriental sabre.I want to see paupers and queens;I want to see roses and blood;I want to see those who die for love or, better, for hatred.And then to return home laterTo tell my adventure to people interested in dreamsRaising – like Sinbad – my old Arab cupFrom time to time to my lipsTo interrupt the narrative artfully…

Images

The World Exposition of 1889 in Paris had an enormous impact on artists who reveled in the exposure it provided to a non-European world. Gauguin painted this woman in response to the same Javanese dancers who enthralled Debussy and who inspired gamelan-like pieces such as Pagodes and Cloches à travers les feuilles.

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), Caribbean Woman (1889)

Musical examples

The dignity of this music encapsulates the beauty of the sculpture unearthed at Delphi that Debussy sought to evoke. Archeological digs were making headlines across Paris during Debussy's lifetime; they offered invaluable glimpses of other times and other cultures-- but, of course, did so at the expense of the current inhabitants forcibly evicted from their homes in order to facilitate digging.

Like Danseuses de Delphe, this prelude offers the musical depiction of a beautiful object from a far away place, in this case a burial urn from Egypt. Debussy owned the object he depicted, and it was one of a number of objects he lovingly collected from the greater Oriental world.

Yet another homage to the whole-tone scale and to the gongs of the gamelan, this first piece of Images, Book II is far more other-worldly than Reflects dan l'eau, the first piece of Images, Book 1 written just a few years earlier. It fully explores the concept of layers in sound and rhythm and regards major and minor tonalities as a worn-out western fashion in need of replacement.

There are few pieces by Debussy more still than Et la lune descend sur le temple que fut, few more eager to show that time need not march onward, and few more illustrative of Eastern mindsets that confer a serenity rarely granted in the West.

This is one of the longest and most elaborate of the preludes. Its subtle opening reference to the French song, "Au Clair de la Lune" alerts us to its French origins, but it is the shaded glow of the moon in distant lands that dominates the music. The title refers to the coronation of the English king, George V, as emperor of India, and the French journalistic reports on the ceremonies exemplified the dangers of colonialism in a nutshell: they conveyed wide-eyed fascination with a native population, mixed with an unmitigated sense of the conquerer's superiority.

This prelude was never completed and was replaced with Alternating Thirds, the second to last prelude in Book II. We're indebted to Robert Orledge for providing a completed version of Toomai, making use of material from La Boîte à joujoux, which is similarly entranced with elephants. The story here is drawn from Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book, and Debussy no doubt enjoyed identifying with young Toomai who happily crossed boundaries to cavort with elephants. Such fantasies of crossing borders across centuries, countries, and species abound in Debussy's oeuvre.